Harley-Davidson said economic and currency woes in Brazil helped push down sales of its motorcycles in the country. Above, a dealership in Michigan.

Bloomberg News

Good morning. Weak readings on the economy are being borne out in corporate earnings, the WSJ reports. U.S. corporate profits are set to decline for the third straight quarter, the longest and broadest slide in earnings since the financial crisis, weighed down by the energy slump and slowing growth around the world.

Weakness was felt across the board, with executives from Apple Inc. to railroad Norfolk SouthernCorp. and snack giant Mondelez International Inc. saying the current quarter remains tough. 3M Co., which makes tapes, filters and insulation for consumer electronics, forecast continued weak demand for that industry. Procter & Gamble Co. reported sales declines in its five business categories despite price increases.

Based on the 55% of companies in the S&P 500 index that had already reported results Thursday morning, Thomson Reuters expects overall earnings to decline by 6.1% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Even excluding energy companies, which are expected to have their worst quarter since oil prices began to plunge in 2014, profits are on pace to fall by 0.5%. Revenue is expected to fall 1.4% overall, or rise 1.7% excluding energy, according to Thomson Reuters.

CFO JOURNAL TODAY

Domino’s margins crimped by higher wages.Domino’s Pizza Inc.’s finance chief said Thursday that increased labor costs at company-owned stores weighed margins during the first quarter, CFO Journal’s Maxwell Murphy reports. The global pizza chain reported nearly 10% growth in per-share earnings, largely due to an accelerated share repurchase. Net income was 1.8% lower in the quarter, compared with a year earlier, but the company’s share base is 10% lower this year.

THE DAY AHEAD

Exxon Mobil still has fuel in the tank. Despite losing its coveted triple-A rating, there is still a lot to like about oil-and-gas giant ExxonMobil Corp. ahead of Friday’s earnings report, writes Steven Russolillo for Ahead of the Tape. A day after its downgrade, it announced it would boost its quarterly dividend by 3%. Analysts polled by FactSet expect net income of $1.29 billion, down 74% from a year earlier. Exxon hasn’t logged a quarterly profit below $2 billion since 1999, right before its merger with Mobil was completed.

CORPORATE NEWS

Comcast’s NBCUniversal sees many attractions in the DreamWorks Animation deal. For starters, animated film and TV tends to “travel” better abroad than regular scripted fare.

Associated Press

Comcast’s DreamWorks deal reflects shifting bets on media.Comcast Corp.’s intense pursuit of DreamWorks Animation SKG highlights just how much has changed across the media landscape in the five years since it bought NBCUniversal. Pay TV’s future looks less rosy, as consumers switch to cheaper skinny TV packages, watch more streaming video or cut the cord entirely. Across the dial, from ESPN to AMC, the nation’s big cable channels have lost subscribers. That’s why media giants are looking almost anywhere else for growth.

Inside Credit Suisse, fingerpointing over $1 billion loss. Current and former executives at Credit Suisse Group AG, stretching from New York to the Swiss lender’s top ranks in Zurich, are sparring over who was responsible for the bulk of almost $1 billion in losses in recent months. Past and present top executives of the investment bank have given differing accounts of who was in charge of what during a critical period for the loss-making trading business late last year.

Abbott agrees to buy St. Jude in $25 billion deal.Abbott Laboratories’ deal to acquire medical-products maker St. Jude Medical Inc. for $25 billion was the largest in a flurry of health-care deal-making Thursday that could total more than $40 billion. France’s Sanofi SA said Thursday it made an unsolicited, $9.3 billion offer to purchase San Francisco-based Medivation Inc. AbbVie Inc. agreed to pay $5.8 billion, plus up to an additional $4 billion in potential future payments, to acquire privately held cancer-treatment developer Stemcentrx Inc., continuing AbbVie’s aggressive push to build an oncology business.

Senator’s objections block big deals at U.S. trade bank. A new congressional standoff is preventing the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which survived a five-month shutdown last year, from arranging financing for deals of more than $10 million. Sen. Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) has said he won’t advance any Ex-Im Bank board nominations because he is ideologically opposed to the bank, which he says is “corporate welfare.”

BofA’s latest activist investor: A ninth-grade girl. At Bank of America Corp.’s annual shareholder meeting Wednesday, 15-year-old Natalie Clarke brought up the elephant in the room. What is the bank doing to raise the share price? Ms. Clarke owns 5,000 shares given to her when she was a baby. Her question at the meeting echoed challenges being raised by restless shareholders at a number of banks as performance stagnates under low interest rates, new regulatory burdens and volatile markets.

Smartphone market feels the squeeze. Earnings reports this week may toll the bell for the decadelong smartphone bonanza, as makers come to grips with a market whose growth has cooled to a glacial pace—or even reversed—after a torrid decade. Saturation in developed economies and rising competition in emerging markets like India, Indonesia and Latin America is squeezing out weaker players and pressuring the profits of those that remain.

Priceline CEO resigns after relationship with employee.Priceline Group Inc. CEO Darren Huston resigned after an internal investigation found that his relationship with an employee violated the company’s code of conduct. The Priceline board opened an investigation earlier this year after a tip from a whistleblower about Mr. Huston’s relationship with a woman at the company. The probe determined the employee was “not under his direct supervision,” but that the CEO’s activities were “inconsistent with the Board’s expectations for executive conduct.” Mr. Huston, who is married and was based in the Netherlands, declined to comment.

Analysts just aren’t buying the oil rally. Even as oil rallies, analysts have barely nudged up their price forecasts as they worry that crude’s current gains might not be sustainable. Oil’s rally chugged on, with the U.S. benchmark closing above $46 a barrel for the first time since early November, with many traders increasingly convinced that the oversupplied market is on its way to balancing.

Oracle to buy Textura for $663 million. Oracle Corp. Thursday said it agreed to buy cloud services provider Textura , expanding its offerings for the construction industry. The deal expands Oracle’s range of cloud-based tools such as online contracts and payment services. Oracle said it would combine Textura with its Oracle Primavera product management software, which also focuses on construction, to form a single division.

Cypress Semi says CEO to step down; Buying Broadcom business.Cypress Semiconductor Corp. said its chief executive, T.J. Rodgers, would step down as it also said it would pay $550 million to buy Broadcom Ltd.’s wireless Internet of Things business. The company also announced first-quarter results that included a net loss but topped expectations by some measures.

Volkswagen bullish despite huge emissions.Volkswagen AG said it expects costs of nearly $9 billion to buy back tainted diesel-powered cars but believes the worst of the emissions crisis is now over. It still faces many unknowns, including the final U.S. penalties, potential unforeseen costs in Europe and lingering questions about the scandal’s scope. But the company’s executives and many of its investors believe that most of the bad news is now out, and Volkswagen may be ready to turn a corner financially—even if battles remain.

Trump hammers away at outsourcing in Indiana. Long before Indiana became pivotal in the Republican presidential race, Donald Trump began lambasting local manufacturer Carrier Corp. for its plans to move 2,100 jobs to Mexico. He reprised the theme in the state Thursday.

SpaceX wins U.S. military contract to send satellite into orbit. Elon Musk’s rocket company has won its most significant U.S. military contract. The Air Force awarded the $82.7 million deal to launch a satellite in 2018 to support the Global Positioning System used by the military and consumers for navigation. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, bid 40% less than the Pentagon estimated it would spend to send a satellite into orbit, according to a senior Air Force official.

Burglars ransack Chanel boutique in Paris.Burglars stole a number of luxury handbags after they slammed a sport-utility vehicle into a Chanel boutique in Paris before making their escape on scooters. The burglars used a stolen Jeep Cherokee to ram a metal shutter shielding the boutique, then set the car on fire in a bid to erase any evidence.

REGULATION

Part of U.S. Steel’s Alabama manufacturing facilities in 2015. The steelmakers’ allegations against China are the latest escalation in a mounting trade fight over China’s massive production and exports of industrial metals.

MARK ALMOND/AL.COM/LANDOV

U.S. Steel accuses China of hacking.U.S. Steel Corp. is alleging that Chinese government hackers stole proprietary methods for making lightweight steel on behalf of Chinese steel producers seeking to supply a bigger share of the U.S. auto-making market. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, in a complaint filed on Tuesday with the International Trade Commission, said a computer belonging to a Pittsburgh researcher was hacked in 2011, and that plans for developing new steel technology were stolen.

China gives police broad powers over foreign nonprofits. Chinese legislators pass a controversial new law on NGOs that reinforces President Xi Jinping’s drive to consolidate government control over China’s society, culture and economy. The law says any activities of foreign nonprofits that threaten national security or ethnic harmony will be punished. A draft of the law released last year drew an outpouring of opposition from foreign governments, rights groups, business associations and academics for being overly broad and treating foreign nonprofits as a security threat.

Ford posts record results as truck revamp pays off.Ford Motor Co. reaped the benefits of its costly F-150 truck revamp, doubling net income in the first quarter and posting a North American operating margin rivaling those returned by high-end luxury brands.

UPS earnings rise as deliveries increase.United Parcel Service Inc. reported 10% growth in quarterly income, helped by efforts to increase profitability of packages delivered to U.S. online shoppers. Residential deliveries, up more than 6% in the quarter, are inherently more costly than shipments to businesses because the packages tend to require more driving and time. UPS has invested in software to improve delivery routes, added package pickup locations to pool deliveries, and is doing more so-called last-mile deliveries instead of paying the U.S. Postal Service for that service.

Bombardier confirms large Delta CSeries order.Bombardier Inc. confirmed a significant order from Delta Air Lines Inc. for its new passenger jet, a much-needed boost for the Montreal company’s struggling CSeries program, as first-quarter results fell shy of expectations.

Airbus profit falls 50% as deliveries lag behind.Airbus Group SE, straining under a record order book, reported a sharp fall in first-quarter profit after delivering fewer planes than in the same period last year and posting heavy cash outflows.

An employee securing the stabilizing bar of a sports utility vehicle at a General Motors Co. assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, on March 10.

MATTHEW BUSCH/BLOOMBERG NEWS

U.S. growth starts year in familiar rut. The U.S. economy stumbled out of the gate in 2016 as consumers and businesses showed renewed signs of caution, underscoring the uneven growth that has been a hallmark of the nearly seven-year expansion, the worst performance in two years.

Why the Bank of Japan held fire for another day. The Bank of Japan’s lack of action caught markets by surprise. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its biggest drop Thursday since the blue-chip index hit a 2016 low in February. But that doesn’t mean it is done easing. It has been just three months since Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda surprised markets with a plunge into negative rates, and he suggested it will take six months to a year to judge the effect.

Portugal’s financial independence hangs by a thread. Nearly two years after Portugal left an $88 billion international bailout program, its financial independence continues to hang by a thread—a little-known Canadian firm, DBRS, which is the only rating company to maintain an investment-grade rating on Portuguese debt.

CFO MOVES

DDR Corp., a Beachwood, Ohio, shopping-center owner and manager, said Luke Petherbridge, its finance chief and treasurer, will step down on May 6. The company said Mr. Petherbridge, an eight-year veteran of DDR, will become president and chief executive of Excel Trust, a retail real-estate-investment trust owned by an affiliate of Blackstone Group LP’s real estate subsidiary. David Oakes, DDR president and CEO, will serve as interim CFO and treasurer until it appoints a successor. The company said it will consider both internal and external candidates.

Groupon Inc., the Chicago daily-deals website operator, named Michael Randolfi CFO. He will serve as the CFO designate until after the filing of its first-quarter results with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He succeeds Brian Kayman, who had held the role on an interim basis since Jason Child left the company last year. Mr. Randolfi was most recently CFO of travel site Orbitz Worldwide Inc., which he left in November following its September acquisition by rival Expedia Inc. Mr. Randolfi will receive a salary of $425,000, a bonus targeted at that amount and a $200,000 signing bonus. He also received an award of 696,153 restricted-stock units. Groupon said it and Mr. Kayman are exploring new roles for him. The company said it granted Mr. Kayman, its chief accounting officer and its general counsel equity awards for their service while the company was without a permanent CFO.

THE WEEKEND READER

Every weekend we select a handful of in-depth articles we think are worth a bit of your valuable time, either because they peel back the layers on a compelling business story, or somehow make us look at business in a different light.

How Uber conquered London. Uber Technologies Inc. began life as a luxury brand, calling itself “Everybody’s Private Driver.” In London, that may have made sense three years ago when there were about 5,000 daily riders. But nowadays there are 1.7 million active Uber users in Old Smoke, about half the number of daily riders of the tube. That explosive growth might make Uber’s takeover seem natural and even preordained, but in truth, the Guardian’s Sam Knight reports, the company has developed a strategy for moving into new markets that has proven highly successful. “To take over a city, Uber flies in a small team, known as ‘launchers,’ and hires its first local employee,” Mr. Knight writes, “whose job it is to find drivers and recruit riders.”

It isn’t necessarily lonely at the top. In the Harvard Business Review, Adam Waytz writes that he and his colleagues undertook a study of the relationship between power and loneliness, and found that surprisingly, the acquisition of power often made people feel less lonely, not more. But as usual, the devil is in the details. The study involved assigning people to high- or low-power positions and then evaluating their loneliness, but it’s possible that a quick hit of power makes people feel more connected than they would in a sustained position. And there’s also the difference between how isolated one feels and how isolated he or she actually is. “By hierarchy’s very nature, CEOs are often quite objectively alone at their organizational level and may have few links to outside advisers. Yet, critically, our studies measured how connected people felt, consistently finding that no matter how many connections people actually had, greater power meant decreased subjective isolation.”

Nestlé’s Indian noodle debacle: A tale of PR mismanagement. Nestlé has sold its Maggi 2-Minute Noodles in India for more than 30 years, and in 2014 Maggi was named one of India’s five most trusted brands. But when regulators called into question the safety of the noodles, citing high levels of lead, the situation spiraled out of control. Erika Fry writes for Fortune that “Despite Nestlé’s long history in India, the company’s executives managed to misread a fast-moving situation at every point. And in that sense the Maggi episode is certain to be studied by MBA students and public relations executives looking for lessons for years to come. ‘This is a case where you can be so right and yet so wrong,’ says Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke. ‘We were right on factual arguments and yet so wrong on arguing. It’s not a matter of being right. It’s a matter of engaging the right way and finding a solution.’ He adds: ‘We live in an ambiguous world. We have to be able to cope with that.’ ”

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